We hope you don’t have anywhere to go this weekend, because on Friday, David Fincher returns with ten episodes of “Mindhunter.” Both executive producer and director on the Netflix series, the show brings the filmmaker back to the world of serial killers, a subject he explored in the grisly “Se7en” and the anxious “Zodiac.” The new show will likely be more in spirit with the latter film, as its also set in the ’70s, and follows a pair of FBI agents who investigate and pioneer the development of modern serial killer profiling. However, one thing Fincher is looking to avoid this time around is ambiguity.
The filmmaker stopped by “Charlie Rose” for an in-depth conversation, and admitted that perhaps it wasn’t the best judgment call to take audiences on a nearly three hour journey in “Zodiac,” without providing a sense of resolution.
“I learned my lesson with ‘Zodiac’…You can ask a lot of an audience, but 2:45 minutes and no closure is probably — ‘Yes, get a babysitter; yes, find parking; yes, wait in line; yes, sit and have people with their phones on in your peripheral vision and concentrate for two hours and forty-five minutes,’ is asking a lot,” the director said.
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As much a portrait of obsession as a whodunit, I think “Zodiac” brilliantly works on those terms, and the lack of a neatly wrapped ending only adds to its chilling tone. But it is interesting to hear Fincher take a different perspective on his work.
As for the killers in the upcoming show, you can forget about some kind of elegant, erudite “Hannibal” style gentleman. Fincher will be drawing a distinct line between predator and prey — these will not be likeable villains.
“I don’t want to talk about the gourmet, you know, opera expert who — you know, to me these are very sad people under who have, you know, grown up under horrendous circumstances. This is not — this is not to, you know, overstate how much empathy or sympathy we should have for them but it’s just simply a fact…We’d seen so much, you know, of this sort of literary conceit of, there’s a very fine line separates the hunters from the hunted,” he explained. “And I really thought it was time to sort of take that back and make it, really, the reason that we are fascinated with them is because we’re nothing like them. They are unfathomable.”
It sounds like we’re in for a fascinating ride and we can’t wait to dive into “Mindhunter.” Check out the full talk below. [via Collider]
